FMCSA’s Anne Ferro to Depart
This story appears in the Aug. 4 print edition of Transport Topics.
Anne Ferro, who oversaw a period of voluminous rulemaking for the trucking industry, has announced her resignation as head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
During Ferro’s five-year tenure, the longest in FMCSA history, nary a sliver of trucking, from drivers’ hours to in-cab technology to drug and alcohol testing, was left untouched.
“Together, we have made a difference for countless families across the country by raising the bar for safety in motor carrier operations,” she wrote in a July 25 letter to her staff.
Ferro’s last day will be Aug. 15. She will become president of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
TIMELINE: A look back at Ferro's tenure
RULEMAKINGS LOOM LARGE: Much ground covered in five years
LAST WORDS TO SENATE: Don't change HOS restart
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said that under Ferro’s leadership, FMCSA “ushered in a new culture of safety” in the commercial bus and trucking industries.
“While the opportunity to assume this position . . . is another personal dream come true, no job can match the immense honor I have had serving President Obama and Secretaries Foxx and [Ray] LaHood with you,” Ferro wrote to her staff.
Ferro is a former administrator of the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles and was president of the Maryland Motor Truck Association before President Obama tapped her for the FMCSA job in 2009.
Under Ferro, FMCSA placed further restrictions on drivers’ hours, ordered carriers to put electronic logging devices on all trucks, required doctors who examine drivers to be certified, and made drug and alcohol testers do more reporting.
FMCSA also launched Compliance, Safety, Accountability, the long-awaited safety-assessment program, and stepped up efforts to keep unsafe truck and bus companies from reincorporating under different names
Even as she came under fire and FMCSA faced lawsuits over rulemakings, Ferro defended the agency’s handiwork.
“I am not hired to help the industry,” she said at a House hearing in March over changes to the 34-hour restart provision in the new hours-of-service rule. “I’m hired to ensure the safety of the traveling public and to improve the safety of the operations of trucks and buses.”
When Obama nominated Ferro, safety advocates questioned her ties to the trucking industry. In the end, however, trucking and its allies in Congress became some of her fiercest critics.
Truckers believe the restart change, which requires two consecutive nighttime rest periods, has reduced productivity and safety, and put more trucks on the road in peak traffic. Likewise on CSA, the industry said changes must be made to the program to ensure the safety scores are more accurate and fair.
Despite their criticism, trucking industry leaders offered praise for Ferro’s willingness to engage them on issues.
American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves called Ferro “a passionate advocate for the agency.”
Jim Johnston, president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, the group which recently called for her resignation, said she had “unprecedented personal outreach and engagement with truckers.”
According to her staff, Ferro traveled to 41 states, addressed about 30 state trucking association meetings and averaged more than 60 speeches a year.
Robert Voltmann, president of the Transportation Intermediaries Association, called Ferro one of the most “fair and open” FMCSA administrators.
“While we have not always seen eye to eye, Administrator Ferro has always been receptive to the opinions of others,” Voltmann said.
There’s no doubt Ferro had more rulemaking to tackle than her predecessors, said Stephen Keppler, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, the association of police agencies that enforces trucking rules.
“One of her big things was, raise the safety bar, and I think she’s accomplished that,” Keppler said. “There was a lot on the plate, and I think through it all, she remained committed to safety and certainly did the best she could to make her mark.”
While trucking accused Ferro of overreach in rulemaking in the wake of several high-profile truck and bus accidents, she also was criticized by safety groups for what they saw as lax oversight.
The job Ferro held “draws criticism from all quarters in the best of times,” Deborah Hersman, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told Transport Topics.
Ferro was dedicated to FMCSA’s safety mission and “engaged tirelessly with all constituents, even her detractors, with professionalism,” said Hersman, who last year at NTSB issued a report saying FMCSA was not doing enough to weed out unsafe truck and bus operators. “Even though we didn’t always see eye to eye on every issue, Anne was always a class act,” said Hersman, who left NTSB in April to run the National Safety Council.
John Hill, who headed FMCSA from 2006 to 2009 under President George W. Bush, told TT that Ferro “had a pretty tough job to do, in terms of the current administration’s position on a lot of trucking issues. They just weren’t trucking-friendly, and that was hard for her,” Hill said.
Rulemaking thrusts an administrator into the crossfire from Congress, the White House and stakeholders, Hill said.
“You can’t make everybody happy; you’ve got to look at safety, and sometimes the data just isn’t that clear,” he said.
